General Secretary's Address

THE BUSINESS BEFORE US

The times, Moderator, as Bob Dylan said 'are a-changin'. We are going to be 30 this year. In 1972 the Queen had been on the throne for just 20 years, Edward Heath was PM, the Cold War was a reality, there were no such things as mobile phones, computers occupied rooms, the Euro was a twinkling in an economist’s eye. It was another world. Born on the crest of ecumenical hope, we genuinely thought that we would not be here to-day, for some greater church of Christ would have been born. So much for history you may say, so often a vehicle of God’s sense of humour if only you can catch the joke. A church created to die yet lives! Only we would think that was a problem.

Thirty years for which we have to give thanks, for God has been good to us. The gifts weren’t what we expected – a Catholic Cardinal and a black woman Pentecostal minister signing a personal covenant to work together, the URC meeting in St Andrews having united across the Tweed – not at all what we expected, but good, precious gifts. Signs of the Spirit maybe, of God’s surprising future, which has a habit of confounding our plans.

Thirty years in which we have been faithful, telling the story of Jesus, lifting praise to heaven, serving God’s people and God’s beautiful, persecuted creation as best we are able. So many people for whom to give thanks. Thirty years of blessings, but given in a context that has been demanding and difficult, for across Western Europe there has been a massive cultural shift. Some pundits label that change post-modernism, but it doesn’t matter what you call it. The reality remains the same. It is a culture suspicious of the big stories about the meaning of life – be they Marxist, Christian or imperialist. It is a culture which defines itself by consumption. It is a privatised yet globalised culture, whose values are defined by the net and satellite TV. It is a culture in which people no longer belong to institutions, and one of the institutions they no longer belong to is the church. Yet perplexingly, promisingly, it is a culture which still expects the church to be there, to do its religion for it vicariously, a culture that is eagerly exploring all kinds of spirituality.

This is a fascinating and exciting time to be the church and to seek to engage our culture with the gospel of God’s love in Jesus Christ. The over-riding question before the British churches and before this Assembly is how we go about doing that.

Of all churches, we should understand instinctively that this is an ecumenical agenda. God’s mission is for all God’s people, and the resources of all God’s people should be placed into God’s hands. This Assembly is asked to deliberate on important ecumenical explorations in two of our nations – the proposal for an ecumenical bishop in Wales, and the Anglican-Methodist covenant. Such explorations can seem remote from the life of the local church. They can appear to be merely an exercise in ecu-speak, but that would be to misread them. Whatever their merits may be, and that we must debate, they are ways of bringing God’s people together, and anything that allows us to work together rather than apart means the better use of the resources we have been given in the service of the kingdom.

If we engage domestically in ecumenism, we must also remain open to the world church, for outside Western Europe the church experience is profoundly different, and our partners have much to offer us. It is good, therefore, to welcome guests from across the world, and to pledge ourselves to listen to their experience as we formulate our ideas and policy.

The Training Committee remind us that ‘we live in a holy relationship with God and each other’. It is that relationship which is the foundation of mission, of care for the world and a passion for justice. In our Reformed understanding, ministry is first and foremost the living out of that relationship by all the disciples of Jesus Christ, of all ages and all gifts. That is why the Ministries Committee’s significant report on ‘Future patterns of ministry’ asks us to begin our thinking about the ministry begins with the vocation and mission of church members. All the other ministries, all the other programmes of the church, exist to enable that mission, that encounter of God’s priestly people with his world.

The first report of our new Racial Justice committee is significant in that respect, for it reminds us first of the rich joy of belonging to a multi-cultural church. But more than that, it is offering us work which is at the cutting edge of our multi-cultural world, work which will enable us both to discern the gifts of God in the variety of humankind, and equip us the better to strive for the just peace with which God wishes the world to be blessed. Those mission themes will be echoed elsewhere in our agenda – in international affairs and ethical investment to name but two.

‘Communicate or Die’ the Communications and Editorial Committee challenge us, a challenge which reaches beyond the specifics of their report to remind us that we are here to communicate the good news of the Jesus story. Forget that and we forget who we actually are.

The focus of our business should be precisely there, in our exploration of how to be the church God wishes us to be. That is why we have to discuss finance, and why we have to discuss the use of resources. One thing we can be sure of, God is calling us to journey, to take the best of our past into new lands and new thinking. We cannot be the church we were 30 years ago, for the times have changed, and we are roughly half the size we were then. You don’t have to be a great mathematician to understand that sustaining the same commitments to mission with such a reduced membership means more financial pressure on fewer people. Our task is to balance faithful risk with prudent stewardship. ‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, nought and six, result misery.’ Unlike you Moderator, I shall never understand accounts, but I do know that Mr Micawber was right. During this Assembly we need to address ourselves with the utmost seriousness to our finances – the gifts of God’s people for God’s work. We need to decide how they will be used, and that may involve us in difficult and heart-searching decisions. There are no hidden pots of gold, no secret bank accounts, no tracts of land that provide income for us. Our income is what God’s people give – and their generosity has been remarkable. The responsibility of this Assembly is to appreciate that, and to balance the needs of our mission against what they reasonably believe our income will be.

That is not a crisis, but an opportunity to discern the guidance of the Spirit. Mission is what we do with our money, and how we use the time and talents of those who are one with us in Christ. That is a glimpse of the business before us Moderator, and in that as in all things as you will remind us, our help is in the name of the Lord.